Will Gun Owners Get Caught Sleeping?

Polling data show
that years of hard work (and millions of member dollars) have translated into
more favorable public opinion of firearm freedoms. Can we finally take a
breather in the culture war against our rights? Gun banners are certainly hoping
we do.

Are civil rights
advocates winning the battle for the hearts and minds of the American people?
Yes. Does that mean that the Second Amendment is now so secure that we can
abandon the field of battle? Absolutely not.

Careful examination
of polling data shows that we have come a long way in the past few decades--but
there is still a long way to go.

This data reveal two particular long-term threats to
the Second Amendment. First, there is a substantial minority in the United
States--as much as a third of the population--that remains resolutely hostile to
the Second Amendment and to gun rights, even after the Supreme Court's decision
in District of Columbia v. Heller.

Second, that
anti-rights minority continues to have many opportunities to turn its views into
the law of the land, thanks to widespread ignorance about how strict gun control
laws are already. While the large middle of American public opinion is not
"anti-gun," much of the middle has very little idea about the depth, breadth and
severity of current gun controls. As a result, that middle can be easily
manipulated by the hard-core anti-gun rights faction.

Over the long term,
public opinion can be changed by the Supreme Court. During the latter half of
the 20th century, the Supreme Court mostly ignored the Second Amendment and
allowed lower federal courts to get away with declaring the Second Amendment
does not protect an individual right. The Court's malign neglect played an
important role in convincing gun prohibitionists that the Constitution was on
their side, and in convincing many other people that the Constitution was no
obstacle to gun prohibition.

The Supreme Court's
decisions in District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) and McDonald v.
Chicago (2010) have, conversely, initiated a virtuous cycle in which Supreme
Court affirmation of constitutional rights solidifies public belief in the
right, and thus has produced a climate of opinion that is favorable for further
judicial and legislative protection of the right. On the other hand, if a
re-elected President Barack Obama can appoint just one more justice, then the
5-4 decisions in Heller and McDonald could be reversed or hollowed
out; a vicious cycle of disrespect for the Second Amendment would commence, and
whether widespread gun ownership could survive in the long term would be quite
questionable.

Perhaps the best
evidence of long-term cultural progress can be found in the Gallup Poll. Gallup
has been polling on gun control since 1959 with the question "Do you think there
should or should not be a law that would ban the possession of handguns, except
by the police and other authorized persons?"

The question is
somewhat flawed, with its language about a handgun ban "except by the police and
other authorized persons?" A person who does not want to prohibit handguns but
does want to require that every handgun owner must have a license (as is
currently the law in New York and several other states) might answer "yes,"
because licensed handgun owners would be "authorized persons."

Indeed, the National
Instant Criminal Background Check System, in place since 1998, requires a
background check and government authorization (from the
FBI, or a state counterpart) for
all retail purchases of handguns or long guns. So a person who knows about
NICS, and likes it, might answer
"yes" to the Gallup question, since the only persons who can buy handguns under
NICS are "authorized persons."

Despite this flaw in
the wording, the Gallup question is useful because the same question has been
asked for more than 50 years. Presumably, whatever inaccuracies are caused by
the wording would be about the same over the years.

The data, available
on Gallup.com, show that support for handgun prohibition was at 60 percent in
1959. Over the last half-century, support for prohibition has fallen by half, so
by 2010 only 29 or 30 percent of the public supported prohibition. That's great
news.

Yet the Gallup data
also counsel against lazy triumphalism by gun owners. Note that the modern split
on handgun prohibition (by 2009, 70 percent were against a ban, 30 percent were
for a ban) is nearly the same as the split that existed in 1980. But within a
few years, the 1980 gap of nearly 40 percent had closed to under 10 percent.

So the handgun
prohibition advocates, while never re-capturing their lost majority, kept the
public opinion contest fairly close during the 1980s and early 1990s. Being not
too far behind in national opinion, they attempted to impose handgun prohibition
in places where they thought they could garner local majorities.

Importantly, the
National Rifle Association was able to stop the gun prohibition lobbies from
exploiting local advantages. The NRA convinced legislatures around the nation to adopt preemption laws that
prohibited local governments from banning handguns. As a result, when the
Supreme Court heard the Heller case in 2008, handgun prohibition in
America was very rare--confined only to D.C., Chicago and some Chicago suburbs.

As a practical
matter, the Supreme Court is much more willing to act against national outliers
than against national norms. So regardless of how strong the arguments were
about the original meaning of the Second Amendment, if by 2008 there had been
handgun bans in 45 cities and 4 states, then Heller might well have come
out the other way.

The road to victory
in Heller was paved by NRA activists who stopped state and local handgun prohibition in the previous
century.

Since 1990, Gallup
has also been asking: "In general, do you feel that the laws covering the sale
of firearms should be made more strict, less strict or kept as they are now?"
Back in 1990, 78 percent favored stricter laws. By 2010, "more strict" had
declined to 42 percent. For the first time ever, "kept as they are now" received
the most support with 44 percent. "Less strict" improved from 2 percent in 1990
to 12 percent today.

The Harris Poll has
asked the broader question of whether gun control laws should be "stricter."
That figure stood at 69 percent in 1998, declining to 45 percent by 2010.
Meanwhile, in 2010 a total of 26 percent said that gun laws should be less
strict, while the remainder of Americans wanted no change.

CNN polling
shows the same general trend. In 2009, 39 percent favored stricter gun control
laws (whereas 50 percent did so in 2000). Keeping gun laws the way they are now
was supported by 46 percent, and 15 percent said that the laws should be relaxed
(only 9 percent thought so in 2000).

The declining
support for "stricter" laws in the Gallup/Harris/CNN polls is good news, indicating that most of the moderate public no longer
believes that stricter laws are needed. The percent of the public that wants
"stricter" laws is only about 13 percent higher than the 30 percent hard
core that still want to ban handguns. Many of the moderates who in the early
1990s favored "stricter" (but not prohibitory) laws may be satisfied with the
national instant check system, which did not exist in 1990.

While pressure for
national anti-gun laws has been reduced, a serious problem remains: In the
corridor of states from Baltimore to Boston, and in California and Hawaii, a
large percentage of the American public live under gun laws that arbitrarily
discourage gun ownership and defensive gun carrying. Chicago, New York City and
the District of Columbia are even worse. Such laws are obviously dangerous to
public safety in those jurisdictions. They are also a threat to gun owners
everywhere.

By discouraging gun
ownership, the oppressive laws reduce the long-term number of Second Amendment
activists. This reduction changes the political calculus--so that being a
relentless anti-gun advocate may be advantageous to politicians from those
jurisdictions. Those politicians, in turn, work hard, and sometimes
successfully, to impose nationwide the bad laws from their home states or
cities. New York City's Charles Schumer and San Francisco's Dianne Feinstein are
perfect examples.

In the long run, the
only thing that will prevent the election of future generations of Schumers and
Feinsteins is reforming the gun laws in places like New York, California,
Chicago, New Jersey and Massachusetts, so that gun owners in those areas are no
longer a small and easily persecuted minority.

An enduring problem
for Second Amendment rights is public ignorance about guns and about existing
gun control laws. Pollsters rarely attempt to find out what respondents actually
know about guns and gun laws. One poll that did was conducted by the New Jersey
Institute of Technology and reported in the Newark Star-Ledger on Feb.
23, 2003.

For six years, the
New Jersey state legislature was engaged in a high-profile debate on "smart
guns," with a smart gun mandate being enacted in 2003. Eighty-three percent of
New Jersey residents favored the mandate. But as the Star-Ledger reported, "one big detail apparently escaped nearly two-thirds of those polled:
The technology for such a weapon has yet to be developed." Sixty-three
percent of New Jersey residents thought that "smart guns" were already in
existence.

A "smart gun" is
supposed to use advanced technology, such as palm-print readers in the grip of a
handgun, to prevent the gun from being used by an unauthorized person. Yet
despite millions of dollars in government funding for "smart gun" development
over the last 15 years, such guns have never advanced beyond the prototype
stage.

The New Jersey law
will forbid the retail sale of all ordinary handguns once the state attorney
general certifies that so-called "smart" handguns are on the market. Perhaps
some of those New Jersey residents who favored the mandate might have thought
better if they knew that the mandate was for something that has not been
invented and that, if it ever does come to market, there is no guarantee that it
will be reliable enough to depend on in a sudden emergency.

Public ignorance also accounts for support for other prohibition measures.
According to a 2009 CBS/New York Times poll,
54 percent of Americans favor a ban on so-called "assault weapons." Almost half
of persons who have guns in their homes also favor the ban, according to that
research.

That's consistent
with an April 2011 poll by NBC and The Wall Street Journal that found 53 percent of respondents favoring
a ban. The current figures are actually an improvement from 1991, when 75
percent wanted a ban.

As readers of this
magazine know--but many other Americans, including many gun owners, do not
know--so-called "assault weapons" are not in any way more dangerous or powerful
than other firearms. They are simply a subset of semi-automatic firearms that
work the same as any others. Two decades ago, only about a quarter of the
American public understood the truth. Over two decades, the NRA has apparently
been able to inform an additional 20 percent. Yet obviously the national media,
which has been even more biased and inaccurate on "assault weapons" than on
other gun issues, has succeeded in keeping the majority of Americans convinced
of something that is not true at all.

Polls have also
shown large majorities, including many gun owners, favor gun registration. What
much of the public apparently does not understand (and the media has not told
them) is that ever since the federal Gun Control Act of 1968, every retail gun
sale is recorded at the point of sale by the Form 4473 that the gun buyer must
fill out. That form is retained by the dealer, and may be viewed by the Bureau
of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE)
whenever it is conducting a bona fide criminal investigation. The forms
may also be viewed by BATFE during annual dealer compliance inspections.

Obviously, there is
still much work to be done in overcoming media misinformation of the American
public.

Winning the culture
war also depends, in the long run, on maintaining and growing a social base of
tens of millions of gun owners--and tens of millions more people who may not own
guns personally, but who have had enjoyable experiences using guns
occasionally--who understand the basics of how firearms work and who are,
therefore, supportive of gun ownership.

Thus, everything
that NRA volunteers do to promote
a healthy and responsible gun culture in the United States is, in effect,
working to defend the Second Amendment. Educating the public in safe and
responsible firearms use has been at the heart of the
NRA since its founding in 1871.
Today, that work is even more important.

There is no other
constitutional right whose survival is so closely tied to a civil rights
organization as the Second Amendment's survival is tied to the
NRA. Without a thriving
NRA, Second Amendment rights
would already have been obliterated, replaced by an English-style limited
privilege to own some "sporting" firearms.

Thus, it is
essential that the NRA itself
continue to enjoy broad public approval, which has been the norm during the
NRA's 140 years. A 2005 Gallup
poll found that the NRA is viewed
favorably by 60 percent of Americans and unfavorably by 34 percent--an
improvement from a 51/39 split in 2000.

The leadership of
the late Charlton Heston played a starring role in the American public's
increasingly favorable view of the NRA. However, favorability also depends on
the individual actions of every single NRA member. When a hunter with an NRA cap
spends an hour helping a hiker get her car out of a ditch, that shows exactly
what kind of people make up the NRA. Conversely, if someone with a pro-gun
bumper sticker on his car drives in a rude, aggressive or dangerous manner, the
driver has, in effect, turned himself into a mobile advertisement for gun
control. So, especially when you are wearing or displaying the proud name and
colors of the National Rifle Association, live up to the high standards of
responsibility that the NRA embodies.

Polls confirm that
pro-rights forces have made tremendous progress in the culture war of the last
several decades. Yet we still have far to go before Second Amendment rights will
truly be secure.

Giving up on Second
Amendment activism now would be as foolish as if the Continental Army and the
militias had disbanded after the great victory at Saratoga in 1777. Years of
struggle are still ahead if we really do mean to preserve our inalienable
rights. If we stop fighting now, all the hard-won gains of the last decades
could speedily be lost.

Make a donation to support Dave Kopel's work in defense of constitutional
rights and public safety.

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necessarily representing the views of the Independence Institute or as an
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comments to Independence Institute, 727 East 16th Ave., Denver, Colorado 80203 Phone 303-279-6536. (email)webmngr @ i2i.org